The present invention relates to a living assistance system that gives instructions to a robot to operate an article in a living space such as habitation space in a home and the like so that the article is operated by using the robot so as to assist living, and in particular to improvements of processes of operation information that is inputted upon instructions of the operation of the article in the living assistance system.
The robot used for carrying out operations on an article has been utilized in many industrial fields, such as holding and transferring operations for parts in an automatic product-assembling line in factories and transferring and managing operations for stored products in automated warehouses. At present, the robot has come to be used not only in industrial fields, but also in general homes where people live. With respect to the domestic robot, for example, a so-called housekeeping assistance robot that puts away domestic articles or the like has been used.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159 has disclosed a technique used for inputting operation information to a robot that loads articles on a pallet. In this technique, a virtual article diagram that indicates the actual state is displayed on a monitor. Here, an operator who inputs operation information is allowed to input operation information to the robot through intuitive operations by using a two-dimensional pointing device such as a touch panel, while viewing the virtual article diagram displayed on the monitor. With this arrangement, any operator, who is not necessarily a skilled operator, can input operation information with ease.
In this manner, the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159 is also applicable to a domestic robot upon inputting operation information, and expected to provide the same effects.
However, with respect to the domestic robot, it is necessary to make the inputting operation of operation information easier by taking the application state of the robot in home into consideration as well as by incorporating general common sense on the social life thereto.
For example, suppose that the operations for “collecting articles required upon company attendance” are instructed to a robot. In this case, the subject articles include many items, such as a bag, a handkerchief, a cellular phone, and a wallet, and since the company attendance is made almost every day on week days, it is necessary to give the corresponding operation instructions on the many articles every day frequently.
In the technique of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159, however, with respect to the plurality of articles, the same operation instructions need to be inputted one by one in the same manner every time. In addition to the company attendance, there are many circumstances in home, in which operation instructions for many articles need to be frequently given.
Moreover, upon instructing operations “for collecting articles required upon company attendance” to a robot, in addition to articles normally used, subject articles are changed depending on changes in conditions such as air temperature and weather, in such a manner that when it is cold, cold prevention articles such as a coat and a muffler are required and when it is raining, rain gear such as an umbrella or a rain coat is required. However, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159, an operator who gives instructions to a robot needs to respectively input articles that are operation subjects, while taking conditions such as weather and air temperature into consideration. The inputting operations of this type are complicated and tend to cause a human error such as a failure to specify necessary articles.
Alternatively, suppose that the operations “for transferring washed articles to a place for drying” are instructed to a robot. In this case, the transfer end that is a content of the operation is changed depending on the conditions of weather in such a manner that when it is fine, the transfer end is a clothes-drying place, and that when it is rainy, the transfer end is a clothes dryer. However, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159, an operator who gives instructions to a robot needs to respectively input articles that are operation subjects while taking conditions such as weather into consideration.
As described above, even when the technique of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 07-237159 is simply applied to a domestic robot, the inputting processes of operation information used for instructing operations of articles to the robot become extremely complicated, and issues tend to arise in which a human error such as a failure in specifying articles and a mistake in the operation starting timing occur.
In order to solve the above-mentioned issues, an object of the present invention is to provide a living assistance system that gives instructions to a robot to operate an article in a living space such as a home so that the article is operated by using the robot so as to assist life, and makes it possible to simplify the article operation instructions to be given to the robot and consequently to reduce the occurrence of a human error.